


pictures at an exhibition

by babybel



Category: Doctor Who, Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Pining, Unrequited Love, and an Idiot, brax is a hopeless romantic, i just think brax pines over art of his crushes and i'm making it everyone's problem, it's literally just brax being emo and in love, or at least that's what brax thinks, set pre-axis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24991462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybel/pseuds/babybel
Summary: The Braxiatel Collection was, without a doubt, the best museum in the world. It was both meticulously curated and impressively large, and, in the owner’s personal opinion, a showcase of the highest level of taste. It wasn’t just a museum, it was preservation of the universe’s finest.Well. The universe’s finest, plus three.-or, brax's favourite pieces in his entire collection aren't ones of value or cultural importance. they're the three that depict leela, romana, and narvin.
Relationships: Irving Braxiatel/Leela, Irving Braxiatel/Narvin, Irving Braxiatel/Romana II
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	pictures at an exhibition

**Author's Note:**

> title from mussorgsky's suite

The Braxiatel Collection was, without a doubt, the best museum in the world. It was both meticulously curated and impressively large, and, in the owner’s personal opinion, a showcase of the highest level of taste. 

Not only was each piece in the vast curation beautiful and valuable, they were all indubitably important works of art. Each was too precious to ever stand the chance of being lost to time or folly. The universe would be severely lacking were any of the pieces to be destroyed. Hence the Collection. It wasn’t just a museum, it was preservation of the universe’s finest. 

Well. The universe’s finest, plus three. 

There were those odd three out, pieces that just wouldn’t fit in the eyes of a beholder not privy to Braxiatel’s own thoughts. 

Of course, to Brax himself, they were the most valuable things in the entire collection. Not in terms of monetary value - the most one could sell for was probably the price of a few nice dinners with wine, and one of them could probably only be given away. They were valuable solely because they were so beloved. 

Brax kept them not in their own separate place but strewn through the rest of the collection, so he could only look at them all if he really took the time, made a day of it, made himself acknowledge how much work he’d leave undone up on his desk somewhere just to see them all. 

Today was one of those days. 

He went first to the one with the easiest access, closer to where he entered the Collection. Maybe he’d put it there because it was his favourite, although he scorned the notion of picking favourites with these three pieces. Anyhow, it was beautiful. How couldn’t it be? Any likeness of his Madame President was bound to take his breath away. 

It was a bust, much like the old marbles of Greco-Roman warriors and philosophers. It wasn’t marble, but it was something close, webbed with tiny veins of gold that made this Romana’s hair, carved as gorgeously and carefully as it was, glow under the gallery light that shined on it. 

It had been easy to get. No sculptor thought twice about a request for a commission of a current president. Brax hadn’t gotten any sideways glances or any of those pitying looks that so clearly said,  _ you poor, rich boy. Stuck in unrequited love and dealing with it in ways only you could afford. _ It was true, of course, but that didn’t make him any more inclined to want to accept it. 

Brax was strict about his art. No fingerprints on priceless old canvases, all holo-projection cubes in their foolproof glass boxes. So that meant gloves when he wanted to touch any of it. He generally didn’t mind. Gloves were a nice statement piece to add to any outfit. Now was different, though, because he wanted terribly to feel the stone, cool, beneath his fingers. 

He kept his gloves on, and he touched his palm to marble-Romana’s cheek, brushed his fingers over marble-Romana’s hair, ran his thumb along marble-Romana’s brow. 

Then he sighed, and let his hand fall from the bust. He stared at it a moment longer, and although it was something - someone he loved, immortalized in a way he could keep close - it wasn’t much like Romana herself. Stone, even such beautifully worked stone as this, couldn’t hold the same light Romana did when she laughed, or the same life. 

He walked on, though corridors filled with priceless works of art: sketchbooks, models, holo-projection cubes, photographs. He stopped in front of a canvas nearly a metre wide, and more than half as tall. It was oil paint, done by an old artist, long dead before Brax was even loomed. He’d had to break several cardinal time rules in order to go back and have it commissioned. 

Now, it hung deep in the midst of the Collection, illuminated by a few little lights at its corners. The paint was so thick, so strong, the colours so vibrant and deep: dusky tan like that to carpet a town of tumbleweeds, dark rust red, jay’s feather blue. 

He let out a breath, staring up at it; this piece hung far out of his reach. 

It wasn’t quite Leela. He didn’t have her with him to model for the painter, nor did he have any photographs or holocaptures of her - the painter didn’t even know what photographs or holocaptures were, as they came far after his time. That said, it was Leela enough. Any differences - and there were several, even though he tried to describe everything down to the tiniest detail and correct anything that seemed not quite right - were small, and easily overlooked by an enamoured eye such as Brax’s. 

The excuse he’d made to the painter was that she was a woman he dreamed about, but had never actually met, hence the description rather than bringing her in so the artist could paint from life. It was only half a lie: Leela was a frequent visitor of his dreams. 

He gazed up at her, at those thoughtful eyes. The painter had gotten that right; there was so much thought behind Leela’s eyes. Her strength, too, was present, in her stare, her slightly furrowed brow, and also in the hard line of her jaw, the way she held her arms.

Brax couldn’t help but smile. Leela, he’d come to understand, was just a person who made him smile. She was a person that, once he gained her trust, he was loath to betray. Usually, that sort of thing came easy to him, but something - perhaps the fact that he was besotted with her - prevented him from doing anything that would really hurt her. 

He gave the painting a mock salute, huffed a little laugh to himself, and walked on. 

There were certain wings and sections of the Collection that were less done up and clean than others. Most of them were spotless, complete with sparkling glass cases and framing lights. Some of them were a bit dimmer, though, a bit less visited. There were some pieces he didn’t want to disturb, and there were some he felt better without seeing. However, this was necessary. 

He stopped in front of the photograph, one side of it slightly ragged, as photographs taken with old Earth cameras tended to get when kept in one’s pocket for too long. The side that he’d clipped was, as to be expected, clean. 

It was a rare thing that moved Braxiatel to cut himself out of a photograph, something he’d usually never, ever do. In this case, that rare thing was the need to have something that was just Narvin and nothing else. 

Just Narvin and his nervous, tired smile and his laboratory robes and his hair that had to be cut too short to prevent its sticking up in an unruly fashion. He had that anxious look about him that he’d never really grown out of, and the eyes of someone who was kind to a fault and would do everything in their power to keep people from knowing that. 

Brax rested a hand on the wall next to where the photograph hung in its simple, unobtrusive frame. 

Back in their Project Alpha days, when the photograph had been taken with a camera Brax bought from an alien planet and restricted timezone - a camera which’s presence Narvin had been violently morally opposed to - Brax and Narvin had both been younger, less powerful. Still at odds, but things had been simpler. 

And just as Narvin had never grown out of that gripping anxiety he’d carried, Brax had never grown out of his pitiful school-boy-type crush on the fellow. Embarrassing, of course, but Brax had always been love’s fool. He’d carried the photograph with him in the pocket of his lab robes and fawned over it once in a while, him and the strange little now-coordinator shoulder to shoulder on the small square of photo paper. Project Alpha’s finest.

Now, looking at the photograph unsettled something in him, something that made him want to find Narvin and start teasing him again like he used to in their laboratory days, in that brash and doting way he teased people he fancied. 

He turned away from the photograph, and, satisfied by his trip through the Collection, made his way down corridors and through galleries back towards the entrance. He was a bold man; at least he fancied himself one. He was a romantic, even. But the thought of being honest and stripped back with any of them about his feelings was too daunting to consider.

He was fairly sure Romana knew by now. There was no way she couldn’t. He was constantly professing his affection in one way or another, and although those ways were always theatrical and jesting, he knew Romana could see through them. She hadn’t said a thing, though, so neither would he. 

He had no clue about Leela. She was difficult not to be genuine with, which he’d learned the hard way. He felt like she knew him, the real him, a little too well for his liking, which with other people would’ve set him on edge but with her he really didn’t mind. He didn’t think he’d be able to joke and fool around with dramatics with her the way he did with Romana, because he owed her that genuineness. But he balked at the thought of that. He would keep his theatrics and his overdone acts, thank you very much. 

And Narvin… there’d been that one time, a long time ago, before Brax had gotten so- well, so like he was now. Narvin had seemed extra overworked, extra stressed, extra wound up, and Brax had made a proposal of an indecent nature. Narvin, of course, reacted in that sharp, indignant, self-betraying way of his, and nothing had come of it. That was rather hard to bounce back from, especially when one’s proposition-ee was now firmly politically against oneself. 

Brax had to hope there was something romantic - in a poetic sense - about being a doomed soul, perhaps, for doomed he certainly was. Doomed to be stuck in love that certainly wouldn’t be returned, on all three counts, and to endure the terrible pity that came along with that. He decided he’d deal with it like how he dealt with everything: suavely, with class, and dressed well enough to make everyone else’s problems seem a much bigger deal than his. 

He gave one last sigh to the artwork around him, and then stepped out, pulling the door of the Collection closed behind him. 

**Author's Note:**

> like does this bitch know that they all love him back or... 
> 
> find me on tumblr @lesbiandonnanoble !


End file.
